


After Me, the Flood

by Minutia_R



Category: The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Hurt No Comfort, Multi, Storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-24
Updated: 2014-08-24
Packaged: 2018-02-14 11:33:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2190156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minutia_R/pseuds/Minutia_R
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It’s the mark of a good storyteller that every listener thinks that she’s speaking directly to them.  Piper is a good storyteller.  But it’s more than that.  Until now, she’s been looking into the fire, but now she raises her eyes and meets Nico’s without hesitation, even though in the dark, standing in deep shadow, he should be the next thing to invisible.  He tries to look away--it’s not even a choice, it’s an instinct--and finds he can’t.  There might be nothing else in all the world except for Piper, the fire and himself.</i>
</p>
<p>Piper tells the story of the flood.  The moral may not be what Nico thinks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After Me, the Flood

**Author's Note:**

> Back when I wrote [Aphros' Sacred Brownie Recipe](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2027163) someone on tumblr was like "This is great, but could you write a real Jasico story?" The answer, apparently, is no. But I wrote this.
> 
> I was back and forth about what relationships to tag this with, and in the end decided on none, because if you're searching for Jason/Piper stories this probably isn't what you want to read, and if you're searching for Jason/Nico stories this probably isn't what you want to read.
> 
> Enjoy?

Piper is telling stories at the campfire tonight. She sits crosslegged, her back straight and her hands lightly clasping her knees, lit up with--not the rosy light of the blessing of Aphrodite, but only her own powerful charisma. It’s powerful enough that even Nico notices how the strand of tiny crystal beads she’s woven into her hair reflects more colors than he knew were in firelight, how her eyes spark and shimmer with the same hues.

“This man had a dog,” she says.

One of the Apollo campers grumbles that it’s no way to start a story; everyone knows that stories start with _Sing, Goddess_. Her cabinmates quickly shush her. Piper goes on without seeming to notice the interruption.

“Every day the man took his dog to the edge of the lake to get water, and the dog would bark furiously at the lake, like he was mad at it. Finally the man got very annoyed with his dog for barking so much, and he scolded it. ‘Bad dog! Stop barking at the water. It’s only water!’”

Nico should go. He was only looking for Jason, and only because Jason’s been there whenever Nico’s showed up at Camp Half-Blood recently. Or if not Jason in person, then something--a note pinned to the door of Cabin Thirteen, a Snickers bar, once a smirking vampire toy from a Happy Meal.

Jason is kind of an idiot.

But today there’d been nothing, and Nico had just wanted . . . okay, maybe Nico is kind of an idiot too, but he just wanted to find Jason and make sure nothing was wrong.

Well, he’s found Jason. Jason is here with the rest of the camp, listening to Piper’s story. And there’s nothing wrong--he looks a little tired, maybe, but he’s not injured, he’s fine, the firelight is turning all his hair to gold, even the little hairs on his forearms where they’re resting on his drawn-up knees . . .

Nico should go. This stuff--campfires, stories, roasted marshmallows--it’s not for him. But he stays a little longer, hanging back out of sight.

“To his surprise,” says Piper, “the dog looked right at him and began to talk. The dog said, ‘One day soon, the storms will come. The waters will rise, and everyone will drown. You can save yourself and your family by building a raft, but first you will have to sacrifice me. You must throw me into the water.’ When the man protested, the dog said, ‘If you don’t believe me, look at the scruff of my neck. I am already dead.’”

It’s the mark of a good storyteller that every listener thinks that she’s speaking directly to them. Piper is a good storyteller. But it’s more than that. Until now, she’s been looking into the fire, but now she raises her eyes and meets Nico’s without hesitation, even though in the dark, standing in deep shadow, he should be the next thing to invisible. He tries to look away--it’s not even a choice, it’s an instinct--and finds he can’t. There might be nothing else in all the world except for Piper, the fire and himself.

_Why are you telling me this?_ he wants to ask her. _Do you think I don’t know?_ Piper has barely known Nico for a year, after all, and Nico has had to live with himself for . . . as long as he’s been alive. Further back than he can remember people or events, he can remember being a thing out of place, out of time, a wrong thing.

“The man grabbed the dog by the scruff of its neck,” says Piper, and it’s as if her fingers are on the back of his neck where--Hazel tells him--you can count the vertebrae, “and saw that its skin and fur were already coming apart. Underneath was nothing but bones. The dog was a skeleton dog.”

_Skeleton. Dog._ Nico feels as though he’s been vivisected. Anyone who looked up at the fringes of the forest where he’s standing would see him totally exposed--but only Piper does.

“So, with tears in his eyes, the man said goodbye to his skeleton dog and tossed it in the water, where it promptly sank.”

“That’s not fair,” one of the younger campers pipes up--a knobby-kneed, mop-haired son on Nemesis. “The dog didn’t do anything wrong. Why couldn’t the man find a way to save it too?”

“Maybe he could have.” There’s an odd, bitter twist to Piper’s voice. “But what would be the point?”

Waking from his death-trance in Rome, Piper is the first thing Nico can remember seeing. He’d been too weak to do more than crawl, and she’d pulled him away from the fight, defying all comers, standing over him with her gleaming bronze dagger. Nico is glad that he only found out later that she barely knew how to use it. She’d reminded him of an eagle then, hovering with fierce protectiveness over her nest, and now-- _She doesn’t mean it like that. Like my life is worthless, like if she had to do it again she wouldn’t save me. She can’t mean it._ But Nico knows she does. Piper’s voice doesn’t admit of doubt. Jealousy, the fatal flaw of the children of Aphrodite--but Piper must have it bad if she’s jealous of him.

Between himself and the radiant son of Jupiter, there has never been--could never be--anything.

“No matter how tightly the man held onto the dog, it wasn’t gonna make it any less dead. The dog knew that,” Piper says softly. “And eventually the man accepted it too. So after the dog sank back into the lake, he built a raft, and when the flood came he and his family survived.”

Could Nico do that? Just . . . let go, sink beneath the waves. Die, or at least disappear for good, instead of always coming back to Camp Half-Blood or New Rome no matter how often he leaves. He’s always clung too tightly--to Bianca, even after she told him it was time for her to move on. To his dreams of Percy, for years, when he knew from the start they were hopeless.

_What right does she have to ask that of me?_ Nico’s hands curl into fists. The anger sweeping over him is familiar, almost soothing in contrast to naked hurt and grief. Just like his father, always outcast, unacknowledged--even a dog is allowed scraps from the table. Is it too much for Nico to ask, a place where he can sleep, a roof over his head? A friend?

“When the rains subsided, and the raft landed, the man and his family were the only ones alive.” There’s a wobble in Piper’s voice, a hitch in her breath; her eyes are very bright. “The man heard sounds from the other side of a hill--like thousands of people laughing and dancing--but when he raced to the top, alas, down below he saw nothing except bones littering the ground--thousands of skeletons of all the people who had died in the flood. He realized the ghosts of the dead had been dancing. That was the sound he heard.”

For a full minute, the only sounds Nico can hear are the hiss and pop of the fire and the rush of blood in his ears. It takes him--and the rest of the campers--that long to realize that the story is over. What kind of ending is that? What kind of story, where the dead rejoice while the living grieve?

Freed from the spell of words, Nico looks for Jason again. Hazel tells Nico that he’s too pale, but in his time in the underworld Nico’s seen every shade of pale there is--and Jason looks like a man stabbed, and left to bleed out.

And why is he sitting on the other side of the campfire from Piper, if the whole point of the story was to stake her claim on him? Why is she sobbing into Leo’s shoulder instead, while he pats her back awkwardly and whispers something Nico can’t hear?

How could Nico have misunderstood so badly? Not _hands off; he’s mine_ but _I wish you joy of him; he’s all yours_.

This isn’t the way it’s supposed to go.

Jason looks over his shoulder, as if he knows there’s someone there, watching him. His face is turned away from the fire now, too dark for Nico to read. He is so beautiful. He starts to stand up, and Nico can’t get enough breath. What will he do, when Jason finds him? What can he possibly say?

There’s only one thing Nico knows how to do. He gathers the shadows around himself, and runs.

**Author's Note:**

> You can see the toy Jason got for Nico [here](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yUqM96UJzhU/UKHkxKUPmcI/AAAAAAAAIbc/8n6Y7V1D98I/s1600/hotel-transylvania-cape-flappin-draconian.jpg). What did writers ever do before Google?
> 
> I changed up one or two words, and took out some of the interpolations and added different interpolations, but basically the story of the flood that Piper tells here is word-for-word the one that her dad tells her in _Mark of Athena_. I have to confess to being a little dissatisfied with the nymphaeum scene there. No one actually had to sacrifice anything, and the threat that they might wasn't very credible. This story is intended, among other things, to redress that in some small sideways way?


End file.
